Hi everyone. Welcome to another ancient warfare answers, which is our short 10-minute dose of ancient military history for your week.

I'm Murray Dam. I'm the assistant editor of Ancient Warfare magazine. I'm on my own again today, so here's me talking about stuff I want to talk about. Thank you for your questions.

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Today, I'm going to be answering a question about the Hemipoy.

What were the Hemipoy?

We'll get to that in just a minute.

How widespread was the use of Hemipoy in fifth century Greece is the question.

Now, Hammapoi are tricky because, of course, they are infantry with horses, which kind of

contradicts. But there is widespread evidence of them, not in one place all over the sources, about infantry who seem

to either run with horses or come with horses dismount and fight as infantry.

It's a tricky one.

The word itself goes back to Homer, where you find Ajax as compared to a man who leaps from his horse, or from horse to horse.

So you've got that.

You then have other references, not in historical sources, but in tragedy.

So Sophocles talks about Hammapoy.

You've got other plays where Hamipoi are mentioned.

So clearly the word was understood.

What it stood for was immediately apparent to the people hearing those words.

It's not obscure to them.

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